Lightwave Microsystems Corporation

Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.

Marc A Stiller

John P Kenney

Edward S Binkley

Anthony J Ticknor

Ken G Purchase

John T Kenney

James Byron Burke

John A Midgley

George Gal

William Walter Anderson

Bruce J Herman

Valentine N Morozov

John Love

Optical devices and methods for attenuating, shuttering, or switching optical signals as found in telecommunications. A platform carrying a portion of a waveguide and residing in a plane of a substrate is tipped, tilted, twisted, or otherwise moved out of the plane of the substrate to divert the path of an optical signal or to change coupling between adjacent waveguides. The platform can be formed by etching a substrate while leaving one or more connection points between the platform and the substrate to hold the platform to the substrate.

Micro-mechanical waveguide optical devices

Disclosed is a hybrid waveguide structure, wherein a core or cladding has a hybrid section or &ldquo;button&rdquo; of a different optical property such as refractive index from the major portion of the core or cladding, respectively. The hybrid section can be made of a passive material or an electro-optic material. Methods of making a hybrid waveguide structure are also disclosed. These methods include rib-based methods and trench-based methods, and in either of these methods, a temporary filler is used in many instances to incorporate the hybrid section into the hybrid waveguide structure.

Optical interconnects with hybrid construction

Hybrid integrated planar photonics provides silica waveguides for transport and polymer or hybrid silica/polymer waveguides for refractive-based active functions within a single integrated photonic circuit. Functions include modulation, attenuation, switching, filtering, and exceptionally low-loss transport. When the active and passive optical elements are integrated onto the same substrates, the resulting composite devices can exhibit strong functional response with little total optical loss as compared to known methods.

Photonic devices comprising thermo-optic polymer

Disclosed is a hybrid waveguide structure, wherein a core or cladding has a hybrid section or 'button' of a different optical property such as refractive index from the major portion of the core or cladding, respectively. The hybrid section can be made of a passive material or an electro-optic material. Methods of making a hybrid waveguide structure are also disclosed. These methods include rib-based methods and trench-based methods, and in either of these methods, a temporary filler is used in many instances to incorporate the hybrid section into the hybrid waveguide structure.

A monolithically integrated, micro-fabricated optical device for use in photonic applications has at least one waveguide surface configuration which cannot be fabricated by binary processing. The optical device comprises a plurality of layers of substrate materials. The material in at least one layer has an index of refraction different from the index of retraction of the material in an adjacent layer. A waveguide surface is formed at an interface between the layers and has a configuration fabricated by use of a gray scale mask.

Growing community of inventors

Boulder Creek, CA, United States of America

Marc A Stiller